Dining table for 16

[Jamie Buxton]

Some friends asked for a dining table big enough to seat 16. They wanted it oval, so nobody gets isolated out on a corner. And they wanted to be able to put chairs anyplace -- that is, no legs anyplace along the table edge.
Here's what I built. Without leaves, it is 7'x4', and it seats eight. With leaves, it is 14' long, and it seats 16. It is walnut. The top is sawn veneer over a plywood core. The base is solid lumber.
I expected to buy table slides, but didn't find any I liked. These table slides are built up from extremely heavy-duty drawer slides. They're rated at 200 pounds. They have ball bearings, unlike any commercial table slide I found. I didn't want people to be able to see the metal slides, so there is a telescoping walnut visual shield to prevent that. If you look carefully you can see it in the last photo.

357962

357963

357964

357965

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Beautiful table Jamie! Nicely done Sir!

[William Fretwell]

The split legs work well. The veneer top has more character that way and presumably will stand more dancing on the table!
It's not my traditional idea of an oval table, are the middle extensions wider than the ends?

[julian abram]

Jamie, very nice. I like your engineering design to solve the challenge of such large table, required some thinking outside the box.

[Frederick Skelly]

Man, that's a big table! It looks great Jamie. Will you also be making the chairs?

[Jim Becker]

That's an incredibly clever design, Jamie! Bravo on both that and the end result.

[Jamie Buxton]

Thank you all for your kind words about my aircraft carrier.

Bill, I'd call this an oval table -- at least without any leaves installed. What it is not is elliptical. An ellipse is pointier at the ends. That pointiness doesn't provide a nice spot for a diner at the end of the table. So I made this oval a little blunter on the ends.
I wanted the table to work with any number of leaves -- 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4. It turns out that this means all the leaves have to be the same width. With any leaves installed, the long edges have a straight section, so I wouldn't really call it an oval any longer.
The leaves have leaf pins to help align everything. I arranged them so that any leaf can be rotated 180 degrees. You just pull them out of the closet, any drop them anywhere, in any orientation.

Frederick -- yeah, it seems like chairs are in the offing too. Probably not 16 of them. More like 8.